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| Christine Kay knows key to piano maintenance By Ofelia Saenz, Signal Tribune staff writer 
If one were to steal a peek into Christine Kay's bag of instruments and guess what she does for a living, it would not be an easy task. Her tools might suggest handyman, locksmith, sadistic dentist, 19th century physician. "I tune and repair pianos," says Kay, as she sits surrounded by rubber wedges, tuning pins, well-worn dental picks and her trusty tuning hammer. "I do what I can to make a piano perform at its best." Kay apprenticed under her father, who was a tuner for fifteen years. "My dad owned his own businesses," says Kay "and one time he was observing somebody tuning my mom's pianos and he just loved that. He sold his stores and tagged along with this tuner for a year and learned the business." Among Kay's prize tools are those her father made. "My dad made that from a bass string," she says pointing at a slender arcane looking piece of steel. "It has a tiny notch in it, and it's for pushing strings back into place. And he made this one," she holds up a rubber mallet, "it's for muting. I like the little soft rubber handle." Kay's work is as esoteric as her instruments. There are about 1000 movable parts interacting inside a piano. Also, unlike a guitar or violin, which have tuning pegs, a piano requires a bit of strength to crank the tuning hammer hard enough to get a string to change pitch. Tuning, in the right hands, is a balancing act between force and delicacy. "There's eighty-eight notes on the standard piano and most of them have more than one string. So you're tuning over two-hundred strings," explains Kay. "The notes that have two or three strings have to sound exactly the same when they're played together, otherwise the piano does not sound like it's in tune." Although most pianos only require tuning about once a year, Kay points out that time is not the only factor. Moving the piano can cause it to come out of tune as well as an improper environment. If Kay sees that a client has positioned a piano in a bad place, she takes on the responsibility of suggesting a more appropriate spot. According to Kay, the pitch of an untuned piano tends to be flat in the summer and is more likely to be sharp in the winter, particularly after a lot of rain, because of the way wood expands and contracts according to the amount of moisture in the air. Although Kay works on pianos all year, it is after seasonal changes that she most notices a change in a pianos pitch. Pianos, like people, perform better when nurtured. "Your piano deserves good care," says Kay. Like any good "doctor," she understands the secret to long life is maintenance. |